What if you are right and they are wrong?: Gifu Kitagata apartment building as a collective exception

Abstract

This article tries to define a set of strategies about the generation of collective space in housing buildings by analysing some project devices, using as a reference three concepts -density, time and perception- that define, among others, the contemporary public space and are used by Kazuyo Sejima in the apartment block in Gifu to shape her ideal of living in community. These three concepts are crucial for a correct operation of urban public space, and on another scale, for residential collective space. This fact can thus facilitate social interactions between residents and shaping the idea of community life. The use of these ideas into the building through different architectural strategies, on the one hand, define a collective idea that shows the trend of contemporary society in recent years towards a growing individualism, but on the other hand, does not help to facilitate social relations between residents. In certain way, the concept of community inherited from the past is redefined.